Civil War Military History

The Civil War is one of the most well-documented and studied periods in American history, yet despite the volumes written on its causes, battles, and leaders, there remain countless lesser-known stories and intriguing facts that often slip through the cracks. These overlooked moments—small but significant—are what make history so fascinating, revealing the complexities and human experiences that shaped the course of the war.

Stonewall Jackson was a military genius, at once peculiar and perfect, a fearless soldier in battle but a God-fearing man who hesitated to kill on Sunday. He broke the rules of war to win, and yet his tactics are studied in military academies the world over. From the remarkable Valley Campaign through the Seven Days, Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and the masterful though tragic sweep at Chancellorsville, where Jackson was felled by one of his own soldiers, this is a compelling narrative of men and war.

Few wars have been fought by each side with greater intensity of conviction in the rightness of its cause or with more abundant personal heroism than the War Between the States. The story begins with a great responsibility falling on Vincent Wingfield, the teenage son of a widowed Virginia plantation owner. Vincent must decide what course of action he should take when a problem arises on the plantation.

American Civil Wars takes listeners beyond the battlefields and sectional divides of the US Civil War to view the conflict from outside the national arena of the United States. Contributors position the American conflict squarely in the context of a wider transnational crisis across the Atlantic world, marked by a multitude of civil wars, European invasions and occupations, revolutionary independence movements, and slave uprisings - all taking place in the tumultuous decade of the 1860s.

Understanding the origins of civil wars and their trajectories therefore demands some appreciation of the economic, political, social, cultural, and geographic order of societies. If there is one factor that best predicts why a civil war erupts, it is a prior civil war. That is why knowledge of a country's history of political violence, and associated narratives about who is to blame and why, are critical to understanding where a civil war might next occur.

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.

Lincoln at Cooper Union explores Lincoln’s most influential and widely reported pre-presidential address—an extraordinary appeal by the western politician to the eastern elite that propelled him toward the Republican nomination for president. Delivered in New York in February 1860, the Cooper Union speech dispelled doubts about Lincoln’s suitability for the presidency and reassured conservatives of his moderation while reaffirming his opposition to slavery to Republican progressives.

One of the most studied and written about episodes in US history, the American Civil War remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. The conflict was one of the earliest industrial wars in which mass-produced weapons were employed. The mobilization of civilian factories, shipyards, transportation, and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I, World War II, and subsequent conflicts.

W.C. Jameson tells the secrets of lost army payrolls and smuggled gold scattered about the countryside, nearly forgotten but awaiting discovery. Jameson, a folklorist, musician, and environmentalist, has been on close to two hundred expeditions for lost stashes of gold, silver, or other treasures.

Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.

With its emphasis on traditional values, family, faith, military service, good manners, small government, and independent-minded people, the South should certainly rise again. Far from being the backwater of prejudice and ignorance that the liberal media would have you believe, the South has always been the center of American culture.

The audiobook covers the first stages of the war, from 1927-1937, the interlude from 1938-1945 during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, and the final and most well-known phase of the war from 1946-1949. Learn about the causes, events, and lasting effects of the Chinese Civil War and about the warfare tactics and political strategy of the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Kuomintang during these integral years. This is the story about how a group of young, inexperienced Chinese revolutionaries changed the destiny of China.

Eric Foner gives us the definitive history of Abraham Lincoln and the end of slavery in America. Foner's Lincoln emerges as a leader, one whose greatness lies in his capacity for moral and political growth through real engagement with allies and critics alike. This powerful work will transform our understanding of the nation's greatest president and the issue that mattered most.

In the decade before the onset of the Civil War, groups of Americans engaged in a series of longshot - and illegal - forays into Mexico, Cuba, and other Central American countries in hopes of taking them over. These efforts became known as filibustering, and their goal was to seize territory to create new independent fiefdoms, which would ultimately be annexed by the still-growing United States. Most failed miserably. William Walker was the outlier. Soft-spoken with no military background, in 1856 he managed to install himself as president of Nicaragua.

In The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege, historian Mark M. Smith considers how all five senses, including sight, shaped the experience of the Civil War and thus its memory, exploring its full sensory impact on everyone from the soldiers on the field to the civilians waiting at home.

On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611 men of the US 7th Cavalry rode toward the banks of the Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory, where 3,000 Indians stood waiting for battle. The lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer.

Strange and Obscure Stories of the Civil War is an entertaining look at the Civil War stories that don’t get told, and the misadventures you haven’t read about in history books. Share in all the humorous and strange events that took place behind the scenes of some of the most famous Civil War moments.

The author was a cannoneer in the historic Rockbridge (Va.) Artillery, which made for itself, from Manassas to Appomattox, a reputation second to none in the Confederate service. No more vivid picture has been presented of the private soldier in camp, on the march, or in action. It was written evidently not with any commercial view, but was an undertaking from a conviction that its performance was a question of duty to his comrades.

Among the autobiographies of great military figures, Ulysses S. Grant’s is certainly one of the finest, and it is arguably the most notable literary achievement of any American president: a lucid, compelling, and brutally honest chronicle of triumph and failure. From his frontier boyhood, to his heroics in battle, to the grinding poverty from which the Civil War ironically rescued him, these memoirs are a mesmerizing, deeply moving account of a brilliant man told with great courage.

The anchor of The O'Reilly Factor recounts one of the most dramatic stories in American history - how one gunshot changed the country forever. In the spring of 1865, the bloody saga of America's Civil War finally comes to an end after a series of increasingly harrowing battles. President Abraham Lincoln's generous terms for Robert E. Lee's surrender are devised to fulfill Lincoln's dream of healing a divided nation. But one man and his band of murderous accomplices are not appeased....